Fences go up along the Mexican border

Interior Secretary
Norton ‘troubled’ by impacts on desert
wildlife

Caught between the world’s rich and poor,
Arizona’s porous border with Mexico has become
America’s dangerous doormat.

Migrants seeking work
and drug smugglers hungry for profit are wreaking havoc on the
national parks, forests and wildlife refuges that make up most of
Arizona’s border with Mexico. They’ve sparked
wildfires, disrupted habitat for endangered species, and fouled
pristine areas with water bottles and human waste.

The
cross-border traffic is also taking a human toll: Stepped-up
enforcement in border cities like San Diego, Nogales and El Paso
has shifted migration routes to rugged wilderness areas (HCN,
9/27/99: Do you want more wilderness? Good luck). Last year, 163
immigrants perished in southern Arizona, most succumbing to the
unforgiving Sonoran Desert, many abandoned by the "coyote"
smugglers who also took their life savings. Then, last August, a
Mexican national shot and killed a ranger at Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument.

Now, to stem the flow of people and
narcotics into the U.S., the Border Patrol is proposing to add more
fences, roads, video cameras, remote sensors and stadium-style
lighting in southern Arizona. The agency argues a tighter border
will not only bolster America’s wars on terrorism and drugs,
but also lead to less ecological damage. Illegal immigrants, they
say, will either be caught before they get far into the U.S., or
deterred from entering in the first place. As it stands now, only a
flimsy barbed wire fence — or nothing at all —
separates the First and Third Worlds along much of the border in
Arizona. But many environmental groups and human rights activists
are opposed to the Border Patrol’s plan, arguing that
it’s bound to cost millions while simply shifting the problem
elsewhere. "People are going to be pushed into even more remote,
desolate areas," says Chris Ford, co-director of the Tucson-based
Border Action Network.

"Tactical
infrastructure"

Wildlife advocates are especially
worried about a proposal to erect 249 miles of 10- to 15-foot-high
fences — some near recent sightings of the elusive and
endangered jaguar (HCN, 8/4/97: Jaguar limps onto the list).
Biologists think the cats, which have been photographed three times
in southern Arizona since 1996, wandered north from breeding
colonies in the Sierra Madre, seeking a better life just like their
human counterparts.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton also
has misgivings about the fences’ effect on the federal land
she oversees. "I’m troubled by the whole concept of having to
put a fence at the border," she said, during a recent visit to
southern Arizona. "Especially when you’re talking about
something that could impact wildlife being able to migrate in their
usual patterns."

The Border Patrol says its long-term plan
for "tactical infrastructure" in its Yuma and Tucson sectors
— outlined in a new 354-page environmental impact statement
— is still a long way from becoming reality.

Despite
existing fences, sensors and patrols, an estimated 1,000 border
crossers enter the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge every
month, sometimes bathing, urinating and defecating in the rare
streamside habitat.

Bill Radke, manager of the refuge,
says the new fences, roads and lights will fragment habitat, and
have a negative effect on everything from water and air quality to
wildlife corridors and animal behavior. "On the other hand," he
says, "I realize if they do these things everywhere except national
wildlife refuges, where do you think the new (immigration)
corridors will be?"

"Sitting back in the
foxhole"

But debates about a stronger fence along the
border obscure the bigger picture, says Roger Di Rosa, manager of
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. "The solution is not on the
border. It’s in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City with
immigration policy," he says. "Basically, I’m sitting back in
the foxhole watching the war."

For years, the generals in
the conflict have talked about adopting a guest worker program to
legalize much of the immigration from Mexico into the U.S. "If you
want to see the number of water jugs abandoned in the desert go
down," says Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., "let them come in through the
gate at Nogales with a visa and contract to work in hand, then let
them get on the bus to Omaha, Cleveland or North
Carolina."

But any major accord on immigration appears to
have been pushed back by Sept. 11 and heightened fears in the U.S.
about national security. Mexico’s new foreign secretary, Luis
Ernesto Derbez, recently said it could take 25 or 30 years to work
things out.

In the meantime, people like Cruz Diaz, a
30-year-old man from Michoacán, Mexico, say they’ll keep
coming north, even if it means breaking the law and risking their
lives.

"We knew there would be lots of immigration
officers and it would be very hot," he said this fall, after the
Border Patrol caught him near Organ Pipe for the second time in a
week. "But if there’s work here, it’s worth
it."

After the Border Patrol recorded digital images of
his face and fingerprints, Cruz was put on a van and sent back to
the Lukeville port of entry, where he walked back into Mexico
through a revolving metal door.

The author is
the environment writer at the Arizona Daily Star
in Tucson.